Thursday, June 9, 2011

Development Tornado

Lincoln Apartments Wednesday 6/8

In addition to the town allowing the clear cutting of trees in the Atkins Corner Road Reconstruction project, our neighbors to the north are also whacking some sizable timber around Lincoln Apartments.

UMass is of course exempt from local oversight, so the Amherst tree warden has no authority--not that he defensively chained himself to any of the trees in South Amherst, now gone like the wind .

Speaking of Atkins Corner, the dirt piles all around Atkins keep getting bigger. I'm told that the town sponsored project in front does have in the contract a "general dust control clause". Let's hope they institute it today, as the temperature once again soars into the high 90s.

A private company being paid with public dollars doesn't have the right to keep its contract secret. A town can't keep its construction contracts secret either. There is a public bidding process and all those documents are public after the process is over.

If it is a large company, then they do work in the eastern portion of the state, and I can assure you that dirt piles there are required to be covered -- as they are in other states (I forget which state it was, but I saw several examples of this on the Amtrak run up from DC).

BTW -- dust control is to their benefit too -- diesel engines really don't like grit and air filters only do so much...

My (starting to get irritated) source does not have a copy of the contract on hand, but he is going to ask the DOT about dust control.

And Ed, he wants you to know: "The tree warden only has control of Public shade trees in the Town Ways. He has no control on private property. Half the removals at the Atkins project were on private easements for grading. This land remains in the hands of the property owners and is still on the tax rolls."

If your source is who I think it is, he is more upset about those particular trees going than I am -- but you both missed my point:

UMass is PUBLIC land, owned by the Commonwealth, and now that it legally is defined as a "municipality" by statute, why does it not need to have its OWN tree warden and follow the same procedures that the town would to cut down a tree on the common?